Cold Comfort
by MorpheusDreams
Summary: Jack meets someone who teaches him a bit about life during a mission for the Time Agency. Part of a series of shorts I'm working on about Jack's past and the things he's managed to keep safe throughout the years.


Cold Comfort

He keeps it powered up, but well hidden in his bunker.

Once in 2009 he left a ball of string out accidentally, and he'd had a wonderful time distracting Ianto after he'd inquired as to why there was a mass of unraveled orange yarn on the floor.

He brings it out to play when he's feeling lonely, or when the weight of being a Fixed Point gets to be too much. He shuts himself away from his team and passes idle time watching it chase after string and jump at shadows for a while. Eventually its antics earn an actual chuckle or two; more often than not watching it gambol about usually lifts his spirits, and for a while everything's alright.

When he's had a particularly bad day he brings it out, sets it to 'warm and sleepy' and curls up with it in the wingback chair that is hidden in the corner of his room. He smiles at it as he sets it on his chest: because it always chooses the spot right above his heart to curl up and begin its rumble and whirr. When it settles down he buries his long fingers in its soft grey fur and allows himself to be comforted by its warm weight while he contemplates his past and a future that is forever unraveling.

As always is the case when he brings it out, his thoughts eventually turn to the man who gave the thing to him.

***

He was firmly ensconced at the bar of some seedy nightclub in New York, in the early 22nd century, waiting for mission Intel from the Time Agency when he'd met Roy, and had taken an instant liking to him. His sharp eyesight caught the tell-tale faint reddish gleam of Artificial Intelligence in the man's blue eyes almost immediately, but that didn't hamper his attraction in the slightest. In his time AI's were a universally recognized species, built with human-like life spans. He'd had both friends and lovers who where AI as a teenager at the Academy.

So he set about seducing the big blond android directly. He had a feeling he was Roy's first human, but he couldn't swear to that fact. If Roy was at all surprised by his sexual advances, he never let on.

Roy seemed to take everything in stride, and the big android reveled in every experience as it came. He'd never met anyone - both human and non - who'd had such a powerful lust for life, and he'd found Roy intoxicating

He was enough of an Earth history buff to remember that the AI rights uprising hadn't happened yet in his current _when_. So he'd known about the kill switch imbedded within Roy's circuitry from the very beginning. What had surprised him was how very aware Roy was of his own mortality, and that he was still determined to live out his life to the fullest.

Unable to make peace with a law that felt so archaic, he'd had no qualms about tinkering with Roy's protocols, hoping that his knowledge of 51st century tech might allow him to disable the kill switch, or at least elongate his lovers' lifespan beyond the set 30 years.

Sixteen weeks into their affair the Time Agency recalled him, claiming his mission was complete.

"_Don't you wish you had more time?" _he'd panted into Roy's open mouth as they made love for the last time.

Even after all these years, he can still hear Roy's reply in his mind whispering the same phrase over and over in his husky drawl, _"__There's no future, Darlin'. No past. There's just now."_

_"But you deserve so much more,"_ he'd responded between gasps of pleasure.

As he fed coordinates for his next mission into his Vortex Manipulator Roy pressed a parting gift into his hands. _"It's ironic, really,__"_ Roy's voice was tight and gruff. _"If you take__ care of her, keep her powered up, and she'll live forever."_

***

He remembers his time with the android fondly, and though it still saddens him to know that Roy's 'death' was anything but peaceful, he is fiercely proud of the fact that it was his lover's wish for _more_, paired with his own tinkering that made Roy put up a fight; and that in fighting he became the catalyst that sparked the AI rights riots.

He tries to live by the edict so often quoted by his lover. When he gets too wrapped up in the past and too frightened of the pain to come in the future…when he loses sight of _now _he retrieves the electric cat, sets her to 'demanding' and puts her on the floor. As the cat winds herself between his legs he starts to smile, breaking into a full grin as it lifts itself on hind legs, front paws stretching to rest on his kneecap. Its tabby face tips back and it speaks, its meow sounding remarkably like "Now!"


End file.
